In an unexpected chain.. any reassurance?

DanJKelly

Hi there

Me and my partner put an offer on a house and it was accepted on 25th of May. We have our mortgage offer in place, we have our solicitor set up and have arranged a home buyer report on the house. We were told by the seller she would be moving in with her son therefore giving us the impression there would be no chain and as we are first time buyers we do not have anything holding us back. However when ringing the estate agents to find out about dates that the mortgage company had given them for the survey they advised us to hold off as the seller had not found anywhere to buy yet. we explained she had told us she was moving in with her son, they rang to clarify and she is indeed planning to re-buy all be it downsizing. The estate agents say they were under this impression the whole time and that is why they did not list it as no chain. We are not worried about the chain as long as we do not have to wait too long its just odd how she lied to us when we viewed the house.

any advice? Also she mentioned to us when we viewed that she had previously accepted an offer but it had fallen through due to the buyer being made redundant therefore making us more suspicious that maybe it was due to her messing them around. She is in her late 60's but does seem a little odd.

hazyjo

Don't spend another penny on it until the chain is complete.


Someone did try to do that to me before (just before exchange!) and I kicked off and they eventually backed down.


Loads of people say they'll go elsewhere but don't mean it. They usually go on to find somewhere and think there'll be an overlap of around a month or so and try to tie it all in together.


Jx

Thanetia

What HJ says. Depending on how keen you are with the place you can give her some time, but be ready to re-commence looking in 4-6 weeks if there is no progress, and let the Agent know you are looking elsewhere .......

nicmyles

Both my current ongoing purchase and my last one were sold to me as chain-free and then turned out to have chains (sorry, "they changed their minds").

I can offer some hope in that my last purchase turned out to be a very short chain and didn't cause much delay.

The current one, however, is a long chain and is taking so long that we've just exchanged on our sale regardless and will be going into rented while we wait.

So in short, this is pretty common in my experience and may or may not be fine. Good luck!

Hoploz

I had same thing, my seller was going into rented until we began talking dates for completion suddenly she was apparently buying as well. She had ticked that there was no related purchase on the sellers form so I suppose it was a genuine mind change but still irritated us. It all came together, even with this change we were in 8 weeks after her filling in the form so things can move quickly if everyone is motivated.

However, if she is downsizing to her last ever home it's possible she might be picky (and who could blame her) and therefore could take a while to find. And she won't be wanting to move out for you if she has a lifetime's worth of belongings to consider.

So don't incur any costs until she is ready, and do keep looking. It's annoying she lied but bite your tongue at this stage, there's a chance it could all work out .... But it's unlikely to be as quick as you hoped. Bear in mind anything else you find could well have the same issue so no point throwing your toys out of the pram if you want to keep her on side!

Cakeguts

What I would do is to tell the agent that although you understand that your offer has been accepted that you are still looking at other houses in case your seller can't find anything to move to.

This could go on for a very long time so unless the seller knows that you are not prepared to wait until she makes up her mind where to go the seller has nothing to lose with stringing you along for months and months. I would suggest that you set a time limit on it if you don't want to wait forever. Would you be happy to be in the same situation as now in 6 months time for example?

DanJKelly

Amazing advice guys thankyou. We are going to give it a couple of weeks and hope that she does find somewhere the estate agents have reassured us that she is positively looking but just has not found anywhere she is willing to put an offer on. I have kept my eye on the market and nothing else seems to be coming up anyway and as previously stated it may well also have a chain if we found somewhere new. Her solicitors are still working for her as they have sent out solicitor the draft contracts today which is reassuring and she is already packed to move so it does seem genuine. Fingers crossed